Fruitless
by troisroyaumes
Summary: In which Tanyuu investigates a mushi-related mystery.


Tanyuu had just applied another cold wet cloth to Tama's burning forehead when a messenger from the neighboring village arrived. He was in search of a mushishi.

Tanyuu received the messenger in a neighboring room, in order not to disturb Tama's fitful sleep. "I'm afraid Tama is too ill to leave her room at the moment. Would it not wait for a few days until she recovers?"

The man looked crestfallen. "I suppose we have no other choice. But it's already gone on for weeks, and we don't know what else we can do."

She leaned in, her curiosity piqued. "Perhaps you should tell me your story. I have some knowledge of mushi, after all."

Earlier that spring, the village had planted its usual vegetable gardens along with the new year's fields of rice. It had been a good summer, with plenty of sun and rain; they had every expectation of an excellent harvest. But while the rice stalks were now drooping with heavy heads of grain, the ground of the vegetable plots were littered with fallen flowers. None of the plants had borne any fruit. It puzzled even the eldest of the village elders, who could not think of any explanation for the phenomenon.

"Did you notice fewer bees this season?" Tanyuu asked, thinking immediately of all the various mushi that could infect insects during a fertile growing season.

"No, nor did we notice fewer butterflies. Our custom is to hand-pollinate the squash flowers, but all of our squash vines are empty as well."

She chewed the end of her brush. "Intriguing. Perhaps I should go and take a look for myself."

* * *

><p>Her servants tried to stop her but she merely smiled and told them, "Take care of Tama in my absence." She put on a thick, warm outer robe and settled her crutch under her arm. She had not left the grounds of the Karibusa house in years.<p>

"Lead on," she told the messenger, and they took the nearest path to the neighboring village. Their progress was slow, as Tanyuu had to take frequent breaks. She was vexed to find herself so easily out of breath, but she refused to turn back.

They passed through the woodlands that lay between the Karibusa house and the village, and she was surprised to find that the forest surrounding the village had dwindled. As they grew closer to their destination, she saw more and more tree stumps and stretches of bare soil, where not even wildflowers appeared to grow. Upon inquiry, her guide explained, "The mining town downriver pays well for wood to burn. They need it to purify their iron."

She frowned but did not say anything.

When they arrived at the village, she inspected the gardens, which were filled with lush, leafy plants that bore no fruit. No beans, no squashes, no cucumbers. The potatoes and yams were doing well; it was merely the flowering plants that were affected.

She inspected the soil carefully with a hand-ground lens - a gift from Ginko - and asked the worried villagers to collect samples of water from the nearby stream. She also picked up some of the fallen, shriveled flowers that had borne no fruit and took cuttings of the leaves, stems and roots of all the vegetables planted by the villagers, wrapping them carefully up in a cloth, which she tucked away in her sleeve.

She could not see any mushi, could not _feel_ any mushi, other than the usual ache throbbing in her infected leg. There were none of the sharp stabs of pain that always came in the presence of active, flourishing mushi. That concerned her more than anything else.

"What am I missing?" she wondered and sent a brief note to Ginko, via silk cocoon, to ask if he had seen anything similar.

She promised the villagers that she would consult her archives to see if there had been any similar stories in the past. One of the families kindly provided their oxcart so she could ride back to the Karibusa house in relative ease.

* * *

><p>Tama, when she woke up, was furious with her for leaving the house and going so far on her own. "Tanyuu-sama, you must not take such risks!"<p>

"Well, what's done is done, Tama. Besides," she added wistfully, "it was almost an adventure."

Ginko's reply came several days later, after she had searched through all the records of her predecessors without much success. "Haven't heard of anything like it before." She smiled at the crooked handwriting before rolling up the note.

Meanwhile, she had one of the servants go out to the other nearby villages to see if they were experiencing the same problem. It turned out that there were indeed more than a few who were concerned by barren vegetable gardens, though none to quite the same extent. Tanyuu drew a map of the region then circled the corresponding villages. They were all located on the banks of the mountain stream which expanded into a river leading down to the mining town located at the foothills. "But the water showed no signs of unusual mushi," she thought and shook her head in puzzlement.

She wrote to Ginko, "It seems that there are several villages affected by the same problem, all located along the same river. But I did not see any unusual mushi in the water samples I examined. Do you have any ideas?"

His response, this time, was quick. "Interesting. I would like to come and see for myself, if I may."

* * *

><p>She went outside for her late afternoon smoke, lounging as she enjoyed the warmth of the late afternoon sun. Around her, there were the omnipresent mushi, too numerous to be named: some that floated on the air, others that burrowed into the soil, still more that floated in the water or lived in the fur of rodents or rested on the leaves of trees -<p>

She sat upright and snuffed out her pipe. The mushi swarmed around her, some vividly green, some translucent and glowing. She stared across the courtyard at the old cypress standing by the gate, bent and twisted with the years. She had grown so used to the sight of the mushi that rested on its leaves, inhabited its branches, twined around its trunk and deep down into its roots - the numerous ordinary and harmless mushi that were drawn to very old trees - that she barely noticed them anymore. But she saw them now, a vast forest of their own, all supported by a single tree and supporting it in turn.

She picked up her crutch and walked down to the gate at the edge of Karibusa grounds. Beyond the wall, she could see the slender trunks of young trees against the gnarled, mottled trunks of the older trees further within the forest. She opened the gate and took a few steps, but before she could venture further, she heard Tama's imperious voice call her, "Tanyuu-sama! Your dinner is prepared."

* * *

><p>She ate dinner in a preoccupied daze. After the meal, she hurried back to her room and looked at the map she had drawn earlier. She called the servant she had sent to make inquiries at the nearby villages and asked, "Did you notice whether any of these villages were chopping down trees for timber?"<p>

The servant blinked. "I hadn't thought to ask - "

"Were there stumps on your way to these villages?"

He hesitated then nodded slowly. "I think I remember seeing some. I can go and check again tomorrow, if you wish me to."

"Yes, please do so. And if you could bring me back some of the soil along the way, both within the forest and close to the edge of the villages?"

* * *

><p>The next evening, Tanyuu leaned over the small mounds of dirt which had been laid out before her on a wide cloth on the floor. She bit her lip against the pain - the soil that had been taken from the heart of the forest was glowing with mushi, which thrummed in a harmony that caused her leg to spasm. But the soil from the villages were quieter, emptier - and the soil from the nearest village had nearly no mushi at all.<p>

She sat back with satisfaction and sent a messenger to speak to the village elders. It was only later when she realized that while she had solved the mystery, she had offered no real solution at all. She could not bring dead stumps back to life, nor could she cause the village's vegetable plots to begin fruiting this late in the year. Already, the evenings had grown chilly enough to warrant pulling out the extra quilts from storage.

"In a few weeks," she thought, with a sinking feeling in her heart, "it will be winter."

* * *

><p>Ginko finally arrived in a few days, in time to hear her explain her discovery.<p>

"I have not uncovered the full story yet, but when the villagers began cutting down trees, it destroyed many of the local mushi. Some were washed away in the rains because there were fewer roots to hold onto the soil. Others traveled away with birds or animals who retreated back into the heart of the forest. I suspect that the plants in the village had long depended on some of the mushi to enhance fertility. The flowers were simply sterile."

Ginko exhaled, his expression unreadable. "Why wasn't the rice affected?"

"I wondered that myself. The rice paddies are flooded with water from the local stream, which carried mushi down from higher in the mountains. I also suspect that rice, so heavily cultivated by humans, is less dependent on the balance of mushi."

"A mushi that makes its effects known by its absence rather than its presence," Ginko said thoughtfully. "There are many of that sort, although they usually do not cause much trouble for humans. Mushi are harder to repel than attract."

Tanyuu nodded. "As the years pass, the earth will adjust, and there will be as many mushi as there ever were before. That is...as long as nothing happens to disturb the balance any further."

Ginko did not answer for a while, as he stared at the setting sun, his cigarette half-forgotten between his fingers. Tanyuu also watched the brilliant sunset - and the flicker of mushi that trembled and glided through the chill evening air.

"I hope you're right," Ginko said, his voice melancholy, as he snuffed his cigarette.

Tanyuu looked down at her leg, the blackened limb hidden in cloth, and thought of the the mushi lying trapped within, its destructive power manifesting as bodily pain, which had become a constant in her life. A reminder, a warning.

She said in a low voice, "I hope so too." As it grew dark, they waited for the stars to appear.


End file.
